Microsoft has ended its advertising war against Google. The ad campaign known as "Scroogled" is no longer being featured on TV or in newspapers. While it doesn't seem to have had an impact on Google's market share, at least by one measure Microsoft's ad campaign has been a success.

Microsoft originally set out to get 25,000 signatures on its Care2 petition. The petition was to "tell Google to stop going through your email to sell ads." Over 110,000 people ended up signing the petition, marking the campaign as a success.

If you haven't seen the ads, one is embedded below. The attacking nature of the ads are reminiscent of a political campaign and seemed to backfire on Microsoft. What are your thoughts on the ad campaign?

Due to a "lack of business support between Nintendo and EA," Crytek was forced to pull the plug on the Crysis 3 port for Wii U. EA is the company that owns the publishing rights to the Crysis series of games. Without those rights, Crytek is unable to publish the game without EA.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Crytek's Cevat Yerli said:

We did have Crysis 3 running on the Wii U. We were very close to launching it. But there was a lack of business support between Nintendo and EA on that. Since we as a company couldn't launch on the Wii U ourselves - we don't have a publishing license - Crysis 3 on Wii U had to die.

The issue apparently stems from the fact EA would like to get the Origin digital distribution platform onto the Nintendo Wii U. I'm not so convinced that the Crysis 3 Wii U port would have even been any good. Controls would probably have been pretty bad, though the Wii U hardware is reportedly able to run the game.

@pod2g has tweeted new statistics about the adoption of the evasi0n jailbreak tool. According to the tweet, 14,051,500 unique devices have connected to Cydia running iOS 6.x. 23 million unique devices have connected to Cydia in the last month meaning that evasi0n has enabled a large group of users to update to iOS 6.x.

The evasi0n jailbreak was released a month ago and was the fastest adopted jailbreak ever. It took just four days for the jailbreak to be adopted by seven million users.

New statistic from @saurik: 14,051,500 unique devices have been seen running Cydia on iOS 6.x! 14 millions! and 23 millions any version.

Apple has released an update to Java 6 that patches a zero-day vulnerability discovered a few days ago. Mac OS X Lion and Mountain Lion users should download the Java for OS X 2013-002 update so that they aren't susceptible to the zero-day exploit that has been used in the wild. Mac OS X 10.6 Update 14 can be used for Snow Leopard users.

Oddly enough, Oracle delivers updates for Java 7, while Apple is tasked with keeping Java 6 updated.

According to The New York Times, the Samsung Galaxy S4 will track a user's eyes to enable scrolling on webpages. Their source, a Samsung employee who spoke on a condition of anonymity, says that software will take a precedence over hardware in the upcoming Galaxy S4 device.

Samsung has filed for a trademark of "Samsung Eye Scroll" in the United States back in February. The device will track a user's eyes and use that to determine where to scroll. Imagine finishing reading a paragraph on a webpage. When you're eyes reach the last line, the device will automatically scroll to the next paragraph.

This isn't the first time that Samsung has employed eye tracking. Their current Galaxy S3 device makes use of the feature called Smart Stay to know not to dim the screen when it's being looked at. We'll hopefully see this feature demonstrated at the press event on March 14, though it hasn't been confirmed that it will be making an appearance.

Faryaab Sheikh, an Android developer, tweeted a picture of the AnTuTu benchmark that shows the Samsung Galaxy S4 features the Exynos 5410 1.8GHz 4+4 CPU. Furthermore, it confirms the 4.99-inch 1920x1080 display that has been rumored for months. The GPU is a PowerVR SGX 544MP.

Of course, benchmarks can be faked, but this one seems to confirm the rumored specifications that have been floating around. Others have also said that the new Galaxy S4 will continue Samsung's history of using plastic shells for the device. One of the nice things about the new HTC One is the aluminum case. It just gives the device a premium feel.

According to those who have reportedly touched the device, it will use a similar plastic body to the Galaxy S3.

The White House has thrown its support behind legalizing cell phone unlocking after a We The People petition achieved the 100,000 signature requirement. The practice of unlocking cellular devices was banned earlier this year after the Library of Congress ruled that it violates the DMCA.

White House Senior Advisor R. David Edelman:

The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to smart phones. And if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren't bound by a service agreement or other obligation, you should be able to use it on another network. It's common sense, crucial for protecting consumer choice, and important for ensuring we continue to have the vibrant, competitive wireless market that delivers innovative products and solid service to meet consumers' needs.

Sina Khanifar, the person who kicked off the petition:

This is a big victory for consumers, and I'm glad to have played a part in it. A lot of people reacted skeptically when I originally started the petition, with lots of comments to the effect of 'petitions don't do anything.' The optimist in me is really glad to have proved them wrong. The White House just showed that they really do listen, and that they're willing to take action.

North Korea has accepted The Pirate Bay onto their networks after offering the site virtual asylum. This network switch comes on the heels of the Norwegian Pirate Party being forced to stop routing traffic for The Pirate Bay. "We can reveal that we have been invited by the leader of the republic of Korea, to fight our battles from their network."

When I run a traceroute, I don't seem to be bounced through North Korea, though TorrentFreak posted an image of their traceroute being sent through North Korea, seen above. The Pirate Bay says that they will work to influence the leader of North Korea to allow citizens to access the site.

We believe that being offered our virtual asylum in Korea is a first step of this country's changing view of access to information. It's a country opening up and one thing is sure, they do not care about threats like others do. In that way, TPB and Korea might have a special bond.

 

We will do our best to influence the Korean leaders to also let their own population use our service, and to make sure that we can help improve the situation in any way we can. When someone is reaching out to make things better, it's also ones duty to grab their hand.

If The Pirate Bay continues to be routed through North Korea, it's likely that that node won't be shut down by media companies looking to protect their copyrights.

Samsung is continuing to tease the Galaxy S4 launch. Taking place in New York City on March 14--just 10 days away!--Samsung's Unpacked event will debut the next Samsung flagship smartphone. Numerous hints are placed in the video that the next device will be called the Galaxy S4.

It appears that Samsung is planning to do more teaser videos along the same lines as the one above. The end of the video leaves it wide open and could be the starting point for another teaser. What do you want to see out of the upcoming Galaxy S4? Let us know in the comments.

A group of overclockers at Canada's biggest LAN party have managed to push an AMD FX 8350 all the way up to 8027MHz. The feat was achieved using extreme voltage and cooing and was part of a demonstration about the importance of insulation and testing the hardware step by step.

The feat was achieved with an ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z, Corsair Dominator GTX3 memory, Corsair AX850i PSU, and Ryba LN2 pot. Achieving a max speed of 8027.93MHz required 1.968 volts through the core and a multiplier of 31.5 and bus clock of 254.86MHz. Of course, only 2 cores and threads were active for the run.

This is the sixteenth best score achieved on this CPU if you go by Hwbot's listings.

Before the PlayStation 4 is released, it looks like Sony are cashing in their bottles and cans to raise some money - the Japanese company have just announced the sale of their 13% stake in Japanese mobile gaming company DeNA. Nomura Securities are the recipients of the sale, estimated to be 40.9 billion yen, or approximately $440 million. The announcement from Sony has said:

Sony is transforming its business portfolio and reorganizing its assets in an effort to strengthen its corporate structure. This sale is made as a part of that initiative.

It's a strange move, as DeNA are one of the world's largest mobile social games companies, with over 40 million users in Japan alone. With Sony wanting to push the PS4 in a more social direction, and with Sony being a Japanese company who are loyal to their own people, why the sale of shares in a top mobile social games company, now?

We should expect new versions of Android and iOS this year with new phones being released every couple of months now, but what about Microsoft? According to a new job listing, the Redmond-based software giant is set to release their next version of Windows Phone later this year.

According to the job post, work on the current version of Windows Phone is being wound down, and they're "getting ready for our next release targeting the holiday of this year." This would mean that we can expect the update to fall under the Blue umbrella of tweaks for Windows. While a "next release" tease doesn't tell us much, we should expect it to bring a bunch of changes and improvements if it wants to keep up with the next versions of iOS and Android.

Yu Suzuki, the writer, director and creator of the popular Shenmue series is thinking of getting into Kickstarter where he would crowdfund the development of Shenmue 3.

The news is coming from a recent tweet by French journalist and presenter, Sebastien-Abdelhamid. Abdelhamid interviewed the Shenmue creator at the Monaco Anime Game Show, which is a video game, manga and anime convention that runs March 2-3. We should expect some news on this in the coming days!

NASA's Curiosity rover has been doing burnouts all over Mars' surface for a while now, but it looks like it has hit a snag - the rover will be switching to its backup computer in the coming days after it suffered a corrupted file that caused the primary "A-side" computer to glitch.

This all happened on February 27, with Curiosity not sending its daily dump of data back to Earth - instead, it switched into sleep mode. Mission Control of course had to act, and made the decision to switch the rover over to its backup, suspending their scientific research until the rover is fixed. NASA posted through their Twitter acccount:

Don't flip out: I just flipped over to my B-side computer while the team looks into an A-side memory issue

Curiosity has two computer systems on board, with the first "A-side" system used primarily for daily operations and the back up "B-side" used as a backup. The B-side now has to be updated with all of the data required to assume control of the rover and when it does, we'll be back in Mars exploration business.

It looks like 2.5-inch 7200RPM HDDs are about to get their first nail in the coffin from Seagate, who has confirmed they will discontinue their faster 7200RPM 2.5-inch drives later this year. RIght now we have four drives in the 7200RPM 2.5-inch lineup, Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2, Momentus Thin 7200 and Momentus XT.

The move shouldn't be a shock with the massive price shifts we're seeing in SSDs, where they're close to $1 per GB now. Not only are they cheaper, but they offer far superior performance to mechanically-driven drives, with less heat and noise which is all better for a notebook. Just because Seagate are moving in this direction, it doesn't mean we'll see them completely dive out of the performance HDD Market, as they'll put more focus into hybrid drives.

As time goes on, we'll most likely see HDDs expand past 4TB and SSDs level out at around 512GB to 1TB at less than $1 per GB. Storage, like all technology, is a constantly changing market and we as consumers all benefit the most.

Google have introduced a new feature into Hangouts for the hearing impaired, where the Mountain View-based search giant have added in a Sign Language Interpreter app for Google+ Hangouts. This web component allows users to invite an interpreter in who stays in the background while they verbalize hand gestures.

Google didn't stop there, either, as they've also started helping reduce dependancies on the mouse for those who don't want to, or can't use one during chat. There are now keyboard shortcuts which can start or stop chats, disable the camera and other basic tasks that you'd otherwise need a mouse action.

Anonymous are constantly getting into the news, with their latest efforts trying to show the world that Bank of America are spying on their customers. With the Bank of America being a, well, bank, this is alarming news. But in the world we live in now, not so much.

The hacking collective reportedly took 14GB of information that belongs to Bank of America, Thomas Reuters, ClearForest, Bloomberg, and TEKSystems. The information taken reportedly has the spying habits of the BoA and other corporations, with spools of data on hundreds of thousands of employees and executives. Anonymous are trying to come out as the good guy here, saying that the information collected is interesting for numerous reasons.

Anonymous push the fact that the data was easy to obtain, with the hackers not requiring any brute force as the server they hacked into was easy to access. The data was reportedly sitting on a ClearForest server in Tel Aviv, with the server being so badly misconfigured that the hackers said it was like an open door, where anyone could've entered. Anonymous also state the most of the information was badly researched and that large parts of it might be incorrect.

In five years time, Dennis Tito's plan of a private flyby of Mars will come to fruition, and as any journey into the dark beyond that is space, there are logistical issues that will have to be planned for its 501-day journey.

One of the most important issues is blocking the crew from deadly radiation, so how would you do this? Well, Tito's idea is to use human waste. Yes, human waste as in your bodily fluids. The Inspiration Mars spacecraft will be built with its walls lined in water-filled bags that would eventually be filled with the crews' waste, protecting them against cosmic rays. The water-filled bags will eventually get replaced with the crews' waste, which will then be dehydrated, purified and prepared as drinking water.

Water-based materials are better at stopping the deadly radiation, so it's a better solution than pure metal. It definitely sounds like an interesting way to solve the issue, but would you want to float through space knowing that your walls are covered in not only your waste, but your crew mates' waste? Delicious. In space, no one can hear you scream, I guess.

LTE is only continuing to expand its reach, with South Korean electronics giant, LG, announcing that they've sold 10 million LTE-capable smartphones worldwide. This number is good, but the company haven't broken the numbers down, so we don't know if most of those sales were in South Korea, or if most were somewhere else.

The 10 million number isn't too strong, as LTE is relatively new to some countries - and in a number of countries, LTE hasn't even rolled out yet. LG are committed to 4G LTE, where we saw them push LTE-capable devices such as their F-Series at Mobile World Congress last week.

The game developer behind Call of Duty have some interesting photos to share with the world, where they show off a small PC with their Infinity Ward logo on the side. To most people this might not seem like much, but are we seeing the first proper builds of Valve's Steam Box?

Infinity Ward is a huge developer, and securing them on-board with an exclusive of any kind is sure to sell millions of Steam Box's at launch. One interesting thing is that they've put an iPhone next to it for a size reference, so we can see the purported Steam Box wouldn't even be that big, what is of more interest is the device underneath it.

This looks like an external hard drive, but I'm dreaming of an upgradeable GPU. Valve could really turn the entire console and gaming industries on their heads by offering us a console with an upgradeable GPU. Anything under 150W could be cooled quite efficiently, and would give consumers a great upgrade path, too. What are your thoughts on these leaked shots?